Can gaunt Gazza finally kick his booze addiction with ‘Marmite vitamin’ drip?
Legendary football star hopes £400 jabs will put him back in health premier league
GAUNT and grim-faced as he sits with an intravenous drip in his arm, Paul Gascoigne presents a figure far removed from the powerful athlete who was the most gifted England footballer of his generation.
But this startling image shows Gascoigne having a radical treatment which he believes has given him the upper hand in his battle with alcohol.
Since the start of the year, the former Newcastle United and Spurs star, 48, has been receiving fort- nightly 500ml ‘infusions’ of a compound derived from niacin, the vitamin found in Marmite – and he is convinced that the treatment is helping him to stay dry. ‘It’s made me feel good,’ he told the Mail on Sunday. ‘It has given me hope. It’s amazing.’
He attends an English rehabilitation clinic where he receives the intravenous drip containing the organic compound NAD+, which experts claim can reduce the physical discomfort of withdrawal and quell the brain’s cravings.
He appears transformed from the skeletal figure who was pictured during an alcoholic relapse two years ago.
Gascoigne says he has now been dry for a year and credits the treatment with shoring him up against his psychological troubles.
He said: ‘I had been feeling a bit down and hadn’t been going to the gym. I didn’t want to do anything.’
But after having a double infusion of NAD+ in the new
‘It allows the body to detoxify itself’
year, he claimed the way his body felt ‘just changed’.
‘For the first time in months I woke up at 6am, I felt happy and excited, energetic and ready to play a football match.’
The £400-a-time infusions made him feel ‘ super-positive’ and friends told him he was starting to look better.
The infusions are the brainchild of recovering alcoholic John Gillen, a former jockey and horse-trainer.
The Scotsman brought the idea to Britain from the United States, and set up his Bionad clinic near Harley Street in London. He also provides the service at rehab centres around Britain.
Mr Gillen claimed NAD+ helped the body process toxic by-products of alcohol, and allowed the body to ‘detoxify itself’ in those who were already dry.
He said: ‘It also restores “normal” brain chemistry, which means cravings for alcohol are greatly reduced in most alcoholics.’
The therapy was championed half a century ago by Bill Wilson, one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous.
But Mr Gillen claimed it had fallen from favour because drug firms had no financial incentive to run trials to prove it really did work. Consultant psychiatrist Dr Mark Collins said there was ‘good evidence’ NAD+ helped reduce alcohol withdrawal symptoms in the short term.
But nutritionist Ian Marber questioned the claims for NAD+, saying: ‘This idea that it’s going to make you feel better – it’s a bit woolly, isn’t it?’
He added: ‘I also have an ongoing concern about individual nutrients being injected into the bloodstream rather than going through the digestive process.
‘I worry about the long-term consequences.’